Is this why Fani Willis is waiting until Jack Smith criminally indicts Donald Trump?
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has already completed her criminal case against Donald Trump (and his associates) with her special grand jury, and probably only needs a day or two of regular grand jury time to go through the formality of bring those indictments. Yet Willis is now pointing to not bringing her indictments until at least mid July. The question is why.
Yes, some of the fake electors in Georgia are now doing immunity deals. But is that alone enough to explain why a probe that’s essentially been indictment-ready since February is going to wait until July?
When Mike Pence testified to Jack Smith’s DOJ grand jury on Thursday – potentially the final witness to testify in that case – it pointed to Smith potentially indicting Donald Trump rather soon. It made me wonder if this was why Fani Willis was holding off. If the Feds are this close to indicting Trump, perhaps Willis has decided to wait until after.
But now we’re getting another piece of the puzzle. On Friday, new reporting from the New York Times suggested that Jack Smith has Donald Trump and some of his associates nailed on wire fraud charges in addition to everything else. Specifically, they committed fraud when they raised a quarter billion dollars by claiming the 2020 election was stolen when they knew it wasn’t.
Legal expert Anna Bower of Lawfare sees this as a potential connection between the federal and state probes against Trump. She tweeted this: “Federal wire fraud can be a predicate act under Georgia’s RICO law.” What jumps off the page for me is that we’ve seen numerous media reports about Fani Willis looking to indict Trump under RICO.
In other words, Fani Willis could be waiting for Jack Smith to indict Donald Trump for federal wire fraud, so she can use that as a basis for bringing state level RICO charges. Of course this in turn would seemingly point to a level of coordination between Smith and Willis that hasn’t been reported. The bottom line is that the list of criminal charges against Trump is getting longer and more complex – which is the last thing he needs.
